Italy's Andrea Iannone gave notice of Ducati's threat to Yamaha and Honda in this year's world motorcycling championship when he swept the board in Friday practice for the season-opening Qatar Grand Prix. Nicknamed ‘The Maniac', Iannone was third in the 2015 race under the Losail floodlights and he was back to his best again in practice, posting a best time of 1min 54.639sec. Defending world champion Jorge Lorenzo, on a Yamaha, was second fastest at 0.137 while compatriot and 2013 and 2014 champion Marc Marquez was third on his Honda, 0.196sec off the pace. Nine-time champion Valentino Rossi, who won the 2015 race in the desert, could only manage the seventh-best time, 0.538sec off Iannone. Rossi, 37 and starting his 21st season as a world championship rider, admitted it had been a testing day as he struggled with tires and settings. Ducati's Andrea Dovizioso, who was second behind Rossi 12 months ago, was fourth-fastest Friday with highly-rated Maverick Vinales taking his Suzuki to the fifth-best performance ahead of Honda's Dani Pedrosa. Despite the raft of technical changes and a new tire supplier for 2016, Friday's times were quicker than practice in 2015 with 12 machines separated by under a second. In Moto2, Britain's Sam Lowes on a Kalex beat the lap record, just a day after two heavy falls, while Belgium's Livio Loi, on a Honda, edged the Moto3 timecharts. Rossi to race on with Yamaha until 2018 Italian MotoGP great Valentino Rossi, 37, plans to keep on racing until he is nearly 40 after signing a new contract for the 2017 and 2018 seasons with Yamaha that should see out his career at the Japanese manufacturer. "I am very happy to announce that Yamaha and I have extended our contract and will continue working together in MotoGP for the next two years," the nine times world champion said in a team statement Saturday. Rossi boasts the longest winning career in Grand Prix history with a span of 19 years between his first triumph in 1996 in the 125cc category and his most recent MotoGP victory in Britain in August of last year.
